


Lyokostar 1: Story 5: Loss of Memories

by WindySilver



Series: Lyokostar 1 [10]
Category: Code Lyoko
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24959491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WindySilver/pseuds/WindySilver
Summary: X.A.N.A. nearly destroyed the Core of Lyoko once again. This strains the already strained terms between Odd and Mary even further. Aware of the animosities, X.A.N.A. tightens its pace, causes Mary to get amnesia and increases the stakes again. Can the Lyoko Warriors survive this conflict both against X.A.N.A. and each other as it gets more difficult?
Relationships: Jeremie Belpois/Aelita Schaeffer, Odd Della Robbia/Original Female Character(s), Original Character/Original Character, Yumi Ishiyama/Ulrich Stern
Series: Lyokostar 1 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805602
Collections: Lyokostar





	1. A Memory of the Past

"Who is this new enemy who has come in addition to X.A.N.A., really?" Mary wondered aloud while walking. Something hit her back and struck her to the ground harder than any monster's laser.  
"What the hec...?" Mary asked while getting up and stopped mid-sentence after turning around. It was that new enemy. Without thinking about anything else than her own survival – which the previous strike had just made more difficult by decreasing her life points – Mary started to toss fireballs at them. However, something in that opponent bothered Mary so that none of the ten fireballs she threw hit their target. One left a mark on the tree it grazed.  
"You're weak. Just like your friend," the enemy said.  
"What? You don't know me! Who do you think you are?!" Mary snapped. When she did not get an answer, Mary observed her target. They were a black-haired boy, a bit taller than her. 

They could not have much age difference. Now she understood what in that boy bothered: he looked familiar. Too familiar. It could not be the same person, Mary did not want to believe it.  
"Do you remember a friend of yours, William? The one you were with when the guy possessed by X.A.N.A. kidnapped you?" the boy asked.  
"Not really thanks to X.A.N.A.," Mary noted coldly. _What game is this?_ Deep inside she prayed that this boy would not be the same person.  
"Well, now he is in front of you. Him you saw at the Core Chamber, destroying the Core of Lyoko. Him you tried to save that day. Him you have already seen a few times fighting against the Lyoko Warriors. And all of it he did of his own free will. He is on my side," X.A.N.A. itself answered.

Blood ran cold in Mary's virtual veins. All that she had feared seemed to have come true now. She did not want it to be true but she felt the coldness inside her. This was real.  
"No," Mary said, numb. "William would've never done so of his free will. Never." She took a deep breath and charged all the trust in the friend she had not seen for years, a friend who could be something completely else nowadays from her heart. She let all of that trust loose and shouted, "You forced him to it, X.A.N.A., I know it! William would've never, ever, ever done so of his own will, ever!"  
"You know that X.A.N.A. is telling the truth," the William possessed by X.A.N.A. replied.  
"You get lost with your lies!" Mary shouted and threw a fireball, which hit its target for once. It catapulted William to his back.

Without waiting for the reaction of the friend she had lost, Mary fled, ran away crying. She stepped into a tower, falling into a data tunnel right away and ran out of the Ice Sector's tower. She ran a bit further but stopped upon seeing that a Scyphozoa waited for her. Mary threw a powerful fireball right away to destroy that monster. The Scyphozoa came apart from the power of the hit it had gotten.

Mary sunk on her knees, crying uncontrollably.  
"Why did this have to go like this? Why?" she asked herself when the crying allowed her to talk. Upon hearing and feeling the rumble caused by the coming of Megatanks, she got back up on her feet and ran back to the Way Tower, eyes blurry. The semicircular lasers followed her all the way to the Way Tower where she fell into the data tunnel while the tower swung.

Mary collapsed on her side on the platform of the Forest Sector's Way Tower. Suddenly, everything felt extremely bad, so she decided to stay still. When no one came to threaten her life and she did not have the energy to move, all the memories X.A.N.A. had locked away a long time ago avalanched back.

Suddenly she remembered everything again. Once again she remembered clearly the young William's joyous grin. The grin which had now twisted into malicious.

The knowledge about her friend having twisted all the way into a henchman of X.A.N.A. hurt the most. Mary could help crying both out of sorrow and a growing anger.  
"William, I promise to do all in my power to rescue you from X.A.N.A.'s claws," Mary promised quietly.

Suddenly and completely without a permission, a familiar voice invaded her tower and said without regard for her agony, "Mary, you're already late from the PE class!"  
"What?!" Mary cried out while startling awake from her painful limbo. The dark shades of the tower turned into light colors at the same time.  
"Calm down, Mary. It's Sunday. No school," the same voice said. Mary sat up, turned to look at the speaker and noticed that it was William. Then she understood that she was on Earth in her own room — and what she had just seen and felt had been just a dream. "Nothing lighter couldn't get you awake. I've been trying to wake you up for probably the last ten minutes."  
"Thank god it wasn't real," Mary breathed and pressed her face into her palms.

She realized all of a sudden that there were tears on her face. She tried to wipe them away surreptitiously but William noticed it nevertheless. On the other hand, he had had seen his friend crying in her sleep, so he did know of those tears which Mary tried to hide from him.  
William sat down next to her. "I guess you saw a really bad dream."

Mary looked at him, trying to play confused.  
"Don't bother trying to hide it. I did see your tears," William noted. Mary looked away. "Mary, if you don't want to talk about your dream, that's perfectly ok, but don't act like I'd be blind."  
"I'm sorry," Mary apologized.  
"It's ok," William said. "Is everything alright? According to Sophie, you've slept all night soundly and didn't even wake up to her shout at night."  
"I'm just tired because of yesterday's aftermath," Mary noted, "and probably sleep deprivation. I've had nightmares. This was probably the worst. It felt so bad."  
"Do you want to tell me anything about it?" William asked.  
"No," Mary answered. She did not want to bother her friend with her nightmares inspired by Lyoko's worst era. "It doesn't matter. It was just an incoherent nightmare."  
"Very well," William said.  
"You said that Sophie shouted here at night. What happened?" Mary changed the topic.  
"A nightmare," William replied.  
"About yesterday?"  
"Yeah."


	2. Hostility

_On the previous day, Sophie's point of view_

"A couple of hours without checking the Superscanner and X.A.N.A. attacks right away!" Jeremy sighed, frustrated.  
"Not again?!" I asked.  
"Let's go before X.A.N.A. causes havoc," Mary said.  
"To the factory then," Eleonora noted.  
"X.A.N.A. attacks and X.A.N.A. attacks... why doesn't X.A.N.A. have a vacation sometimes?!" I grumbled on the way to the factory. I went to the scanners with the others and Jeremy virtualized us, as always, this time to the Ice Sector. When everyone was on Lyoko, we left to the tower.  
"Block, Block, Block. X.A.N.A. doesn't have a very big cast today," Odd said, satisfied. His tail swung and I couldn't help grinning at it by myself. We went to fight again.  
"That was easy," Mary remarked when Aelita went to the tower after the battle. "Is everything alright there, Jeremy?"  
"Yes," Jeremy answered.  
"This was too easy," Ulrich remarked, suspicious. "This has to be a trap."  
"I don't see anything unusual anywhere. Perhaps X.A.N.A. wanted to just cause trouble to us," Jeremy announced. "Watch out, stragglers are coming towards you. A huge number of Hornets!"

He could hardly finish his warning when we were already under fire. Yumi and Charlie were devirtualized immediately and Mary drifter apart from the rest of us.

I couldn't do anything but concentrate on the fight, so I hoped that Mary would be alright. Then Jeremy warned about a Scyphozoa and I heard Mary scream.  
"Mary!" William shouted. "Super Smoke!"

The rest of us remaining ones – me, Odd, Eleonora, Aelita and Ulrich – went after him but even William did not make it in time. Mary got up on her feet, X.A.N.A.'s symbols in her eyes, and ran ahead of us to the edge of the sector.  
"Jeremy, can't you do anything?!" I shouted.  
"No! You have to stop her!" Jeremy replied.

We reached Mary only upon getting inside the same Transporter, but when we could move again, Mary already went to the Core Chamber with a portal.

We dashed after her into the portal and found ourselves in the Core Chamber without monsters and attacked Mary. The first one to be devirtualized was Aelita. Then Eleonora. We did all we could, but even Ulrich was returned to the factory. Only I, William and Odd remained. We joined forces to defeat Mary and almost miraculously we managed to get past the flames and fireballs. Mary was devirtualized at the same time as Odd and I.

It is fortunate we succeeded. There had been enough problems even without losing one from our group to X.A.N.A. again.

_Present, third-person narrator_

"What time is it?" Mary asked.  
"Ten to eleven," William answered.  
"So I missed the breakfast," Mary sighed.  
"You need fresh air. Shall we go outside and talk about whatever we want?" William suggested.  
"Yeah, sure," Mary agreed.

They went outside and headed to the park for a walk. There they talked about the matters of Lyoko, discussed their own fears about both the fight and the integrity of their group and what they would do after the fight would be over. Surprisingly soon it was already lunchtime and they went to eat among their comrades.

The group discussed, seemingly normal, but under the calm surface every one of them was solemn due to yesterday's incidents. It was only a matter of time until the hidden, tense air would raise its head at the table.  
"Mary, why did you have to end up getting caught by the Scyphozoa? What if the Core of Lyoko had been destroyed because of you? What if we had have to stand the same as... what happened at the era caused by the blunder of a certain Lyoko Warrior? Did you think about anything at all?" Odd, looking tired and frustrated, finally opened his mouth to an accusation.

If losing one's temper would have caused a sound, the whole cafeteria would have been silenced by an intense snap which originated from Mary. She said the foulest expression of where to get off she ever knew to the spiky-haired boy, stood up and lifted her tray, but changed her mind and slammed it back at the table with a loud clatter. The noise of the conversations in the cafeteria quieted and everyone looked at her. Uncaring of those looks – or the uncomfortable expressions of her fellows – she left the building, her back straight and eyes flaring out of rage. The noise returned a while later.  
"She truly blew up!" You'd think that she would take my talks seriously. We all did suffer because of that case," Odd said, amazed, once no one looked at their table anymore.  
"The suffering you and the others received when I was under X.A.N.A.'s possession corresponds to the loss of just a couple of life points compared to the suffering Mary faced," William blurted, his voice chilly. He knew that he knew more about the matter than Odd. In addition to that, he did not like how the purple-clad boy had treated his friend.  
"How do you know that?" Aelita asked, confused. "I thought that you don't remember what happened when you were under X.A.N.A.'s control."  
"I don't," William claimed, although he did not fully believe in the authenticity of his claim. The subconscious memories of Rorkal as well as the strange and obscure videoclip-like memories returned to his mind. "She has told me."  
"Well, you don't remember what you caused, but Mary and the rest of us do," Odd blurted out.  
"Oh," William said, not knowing whether the feeling burning his insides was disappointment or fury. "Then I will say nothing else than 'bye'."

He left the table like Mary, although he took his tray away with himself quietly. Sometimes the attitude of the others on this topic tore at his nerves ruthlessly, so ruthlessly that he did not always stand being with them.  
"What's wrong with them?" Odd asked.  
"You!" the others answered simultaneously.


	3. Amnesia

Mary went to the factory and launched a delayed virtualization on Lyoko. There she could be on her own for a while and imagine even for just awhile that she was still a lonely, unknown avatar in the shadows of Lyoko.

Morose, William headed to the factory, believing that Mary had gone for Lyoko. He needed someone who could understand his frustration now. He knew that no one else would understand it better than Mary, especially this morning.

Jeremy called. For a brief moment, William contemplated hanging up, but he decided to give the most neutral boy in the original group a chance and answered, "Yes, Jeremy?"  
"William, you have to catch Mary right away, before she is virtualized on Lyoko! X.A.N.A. has sabotaged virtualization! The person getting virtualized will lose their memory!"  
"Okay," William said and ended the call. He ran to the sewers and hurried through them as fast as he could on the skateboard without falling but arrived at the supercomputer too late. Mary was on Lyoko, unconscious.  
"No!" William cried out and hit the keyboard. He took his phone out and called Jeremy, "Jeremy, I was too late. Come here quickly, before something happens to Mary."  
"I'm already on my way," Jeremy replied. "Wait there and don't do anything."  
"Alright."

Jeremy arrived at the lab about five minutes later and started to fix the virtualization program. Luckily for Mary, there were no monsters moving on the Ice Sector, so the girl was safe where she lay.  
"Ready," Jeremy said. "William, go to Lyoko and get her to the Way Tower so that I can scan her there."

William hurried to the ladders without saying anything. A while later, he landed next to Mary, stated that she would not wake up for a while, and took her into black smoke. Monsters were still nowhere to be seen, so he went to the tower on foot.

Jeremy looked at the data he had gotten closely while the still unconscious Mary was being scanned in the tower.  
"It would seem that X.A.N.A. set some kind of a lock in Mary's mind. I'll try to erase it once the scan ends," he noted.  
"How difficult is it to erase?" William asked.  
"It depends on its execution. This doesn't seem to be too difficult," Jeremy remarked.  
"But why would X.A.N.A. do anything like this?" Aelita asked as she descended the ladders into the lab. "Why Mary and why such a weak execution?"  
"X.A.N.A. is most likely testing something. Worst comes to worst, it had meant to attack now but as Mary's exit gave me a reason to check the supercomputer all of a sudden, we found the scheme out too early and X.A.N.A. fell back," Jeremy suggested.  
"Can things like this be prevented somehow?" William asked, worried. He could not even imagine a full group-scale amnesia in the middle of an attack.  
"Because we have only a limited number of scanners available, it's safest not to send Aelita or you first from now on," Jeremy noted. "I can try to develop some sort of a protection against this kind of things, but I'm afraid that I can't stop X.A.N.A. from sabotaging the supercomputer."  
"Great," William sighed and prepared to catch Mary as she descended from scanning.  
"Let's get to work then," Jeremy said. "This is certainly not a good day..."

Mary woke up in the middle of the fix and frowned while trying to recognize the boy who had bent over her. "Who are you?"  
"William. I'm your friend," the boy answered. "You've lost your memory, Mary. Take it easy; Jeremy and Aelita are fixing the matter as we speak."  
"Okay," Mary said and sat up." Where are we?"  
"On Lyoko," William told.  
"Mary, please don't move much while we're fixing your memory," another boy's voice came somewhere from the heights. Mary supposed that it was Jeremy.  
"Alright," Mary said and looked at William. The boy looked away without knowing how much he should tell about what had happened – or how much he could tell. He just could not say those words to his friend. He could not say it to the friend who did not push him away despite of the Xanafication sessions. Nevertheless, the tingling appeared to the edge of his mind, vague, demanding that those words are said.  
"Is something wrong, William?" Mary asked.  
"I was late. If I had made it to warn you, you wouldn't have lost your memory. X.A.N.A. sabotaged virtualization. It feels like it's my fault that you're now without your memory," William said. The tingling was pleased with it but he knew even without his conscience bothering him that he had to tell.  
"It could've happened to anyone. You shouldn't blame yourself but X.A.N.A. It set me up to this state, after all," Mary consoled. She felt memories starting to trickle into her mind as an unpleasant stream. "Is my memory starting to be fixed?"  
"Almost. This might feel strange; I don't know what a memory restoration like this feels like," Aelita answered.  
"Okay," Mary replied. "Feels very unpleasant."  
"It'll be over soon," William said, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Don't worry."

Mary nodded and took hold of that hand. The fact that she had a caring friend by her side was comforting even though she remembered nothing of that boy yet.


	4. Doomed

As soon as Mary's memory had been restored, the supercomputer's screen went black.  
"What on earth?!" Jeremy cried out and tried to get the screen back on. Nothing happened. "Mary? William? Do you read me?"

The tower started to swing.  
"What on ea...?!" Mary asked but did not get to finish the sentence when the tower disappeared and dropped them.  
"Megatanks!" William exclaimed and took his sword up.  
"Jeremy, why didn't you warn us?" Mary shouted. "Jeremy?!"

Jeremy did not answer.

It was too late nevertheless. They started to destroy the Megatanks while Aelita called the others for help, even though Mary and William did not need it. They fared well against the monsters. Jeremy tried to get the supercomputer to respond while the others were coming.

Just as the screen turned back on, two Scyphozoas came towards Mary and William.  
"No!" Jeremy cried out. "Mary, William, Scyphozoas!"

The Lyoko Warrior duo shouted swearwords when they noticed the most feared monsters just meters away. Despite of the rigorous and somewhat panicky firing, they caught Mary and William just when the others arrived at the lab.  
"The Scyphozoas are taking their memories! Get to the scanners already!" Jeremy shouted. The others ran back to the elevator and the scanners. They could not afford losing two Lyoko Warriors like this!

The group started to run as they were virtualized, but no one made it in time to stop the monsters: when Odd shot his laser arrows, the Scyphozoas let the Lyoko Warrior duo off their grips and left.

Jeremy could not say a thing. Two Lyoko Warriors' icons now indicated dead.  
"No, it can't be possible," Sophie whispered while looking at those two lifeless bodies. No one went any closer than two meters to those now dead Lyoko Warriors.  
"Unfortunately, it is," Ulrich said with a bleak but shaking voice. This sight shook even him even though he had not liked that duo too much. Eleonora started to cry.  
"Watch out, X.A.N.A. just sent Megatanks there!" Jeremy warned. The others turned and could only barely see their doom. Mary and William disappeared from the map but did not return to the scanners.  
"They... they're gone," Aelita said, numb.  
"We lost them," Odd said. He had not gotten along with Mary, but losing the girl like this hurt. She had not deserved an end like this, just like William had not.

Neither of the now lost Lyoko Warriors would ever come back.

It was already late and they had to go. They could not do anything at all anymore.

The next morning, they found themselves on Lyoko again, as X.A.N.A. attacked again. Instead of amnesia, they were faced with a completely unexpected surprise at the active tower.  
"Mary! William!" Sophie exclaimed. She stepped a couple of steps towards them, planning to greet those friends of hers who had seemingly risen from the dead.  
"Wait, Sophie! This shouldn't be possible!" Aelita cried out.  
"I'll check. Oh no!" Jeremy exclaimed.  
"What now, Einstein?" Odd asked.  
"They... they're on X.A.N.A.'s side!" Jeremy answered, shocked. "X.A.N.A. must've put them to a state of suspended animation yesterday!"  
"No way!" the others shouted.  
"I can't believe this! Why only them?" Charlie asked.  
"Perhaps because on Lyoko, they're the strongest of us," Yumi suggested.  
"If that's so, they're now even worse enemies than William alone was under X.A.N.A.'s control," Ulrich said, bitter. First grief, now this. Going and fighting against William again irritated him.

Ulrich's words brought Lyoko's worst era, what had happened a long time ago, to Mary's mind. She looked at her black-suited comrade who had told that they had been abandoned. Had it been a lie?

Was anything true anymore?

William was probably Xanafied, but was she too?

The attempt to understand what was going on hurt her head. The last eternities she had walked in a mental fog, trusted her friend and tried to understand whether she was dead or still alive. It felt like X.A.N.A. had destroyed something in her – and at least a part of it appeared to be her sense of reality.

Behind the excruciating headache, she saw only one way to figure out her own state without a fight with the others. She had to act fast, though; otherwise she would lose her chance.  
Mary hurried to the edge and shouted, "Don't look for me! I'll be fine!"

Then she jumped. The others did not realize the course of the events at first, but upon understanding what had happened, they went to the edge and saw how Mary hit the surface of the Digital Sea and disappeared.

William looked down, confused. He was slowly starting to become aware of his surroundings and realize that this was not a dream and he could move by himself. Was he under X.A.N.A.'s possession or had he merely been led to believe that he was? He did not know.

Nothing felt real as his shaking legs gave up and he plummeted down, strangely weak. The tingling made him frown in confusion as the surface of the Digital Sea came closer and closer.  
"William!" Charlie cried out, but his former comrade no longer heard him. Then he was gone too.  
"Jeremy, what's going on?" Yumi asked, just as confused as everyone else.  
"I don't know," Jeremy answered. "I didn't get enough data on their state before they disappeared from the map. It seems that X.A.N.A. hadn't possessed them but had instead messed their brains and put them into a confused state. I don't think either of them knew what they were doing."  
"A continuation to the amnesia experiment?" Aelita asked, concerned.  
"Probably," Jeremy answered.  
"Oh no!" Sophie groaned.  
"Well X.A.N.A. becoming Doctor Schrank definitely was missing from this!" Odd blurted.

The Crabs at the active tower now came towards the Lyoko Warriors. Aelita escaped under the surface of the sector and hurried to the tower while the others kept the monsters busy.  
Suddenly, the three last Crabs joined forces and shot Sophie, Charlie and Eleonora over the edge into the Digital Sea. Jeremy did not have the time to bring any of them back as they fell under the surface.  
"No! Sophie!" Odd shouted, running to the edge. Two lasers on the back dropped him down, but running out of life points returned him to the factory. Ulrich and Yumi took care of the Crabs while Aelita deactivated the tower. Unable to believe what had just happened, Jeremy brought them back once the Superscanner fell silent.  
"I can't believe this! We have lost half of our group in two days!" Jeremy said to the tape of his video diary later at the lab, just as horrified as all the ones who had returned from Lyoko. Suddenly, there was just as many of them as in the beginning.  
"This is probably what X.A.N.A. pursued all the time. First, it separated Mary and William from us, then the rest of our new warriors," Yumi remarked, looking at the floor. "Divide and conquer."  
"We can't do anything about it. We have to fare with this cast now and hope that we can get them back as their own selves. However, we have to go now so that we won't end up into detention for missing class," Aelita noted. "We have to figure out this later.  
"It doesn't matter to me at all!" Odd snapped.  
"Look, Odd. We can't help the fact that Sophie fell into the Digital Sea," said Ulrich, to whom Odd had told about his feelings towards Sophie.

Jeremy ended the recording and got up from his chair. They would not recover from this loss easily.


	5. Where did you disappear?

"In the Crystal labyrinth again," William remarked. He looked at his comrades – they probably were his comrades even though his brains seemed to disagree – in confusion. "But how did we all end up here?"  
"X.A.N.A. probably wanted us to follow Mary. The Crabs only aimed at us," Charlie noted.  
"Where's Mary?" Sophie asked.

They jumped when an eagle let out a shriek above them as an answer. They turned their eyes to the eagle, which sat up on a wall, and heard someone "say", ~I told you I'd be fine!~  
"Mary! Are you ok?" William asked.  
~I guess I've been worse,~ Mary answered. ~My head is completely messed up. What even happened to us?~  
"X.A.N.A. put you into a state of suspended animation and messed your brains up," Charlie told.  
"That explains why we weren't Xanafied after all," William remarked, rubbing his temples. "X.A.N.A. keeps coming up with new ways to fight against us."  
"Where are we?" Eleonora asked. Mary turned her eyes towards the edge of the labyrinth.  
~Inside the Crystal labyrinth. We have to find a way to the edge to get back to Lyoko,~ she told. She landed and turned into a human. "We can't get anywhere by air from here. We have to go on foot."  
"Let's go. The others are worried about us," Sophie said.  
"Let's go," William confirmed. He would have rather wanted to just lay down on the ground to sleep perhaps forever but he knew that they all had to return to Earth.

They left towards the edge area of the labyrinth without talking much. Mary walked ahead, hoping that she would find the right way when they would get close enough. She, just like William, would have rather slept than jogged in the labyrinth, but she forced herself to keep going. They had to get out of there.

After a period of time that felt like an eternity, they found the place to get out through. Then they were standing on the surface of the Desert Sector.  
"Finally out," Charlie sighed, relieved. "I was starting to fear that we'd never get out of there."  
"Yoo-hoo? Is anyone here?" Sophie called but there was no one to be seen, not even monsters. "Jeremy, are you at the computer?"

Nothing was heard for a while, so they went to the closest tower visible in the horizon. With help from Mary, Sophie tried to reach the other Lyoko Warriors through it. Everyone agreed that she was in the closest terms with them. Soon they got a connection to them and Jeremy arranged a materialization for them.  
"So, you have returned," Odd said with a cool tone at the lab. He was joyous that Sophie was all right, but somehow seeing the others blunted that joy.  
"Indeed we are," Mary said calmly. "Each of us as their normal selves."  
"For sure?" Ulrich questioned. After the events of the last days, he was absolutely not planning to trust that the danger was over. Mary's expression did not even twitch when Ulrich glared at her.  
"Hey, peace now," Yumi said and went between the duo, cutting the visual contact off. Mary's face relaxed a little, but Ulrich frowned.  
"Right, we got our comrades back, after all. That's what's important here," Aelita agreed.  
"True," Jeremy noted.  
"How do we know that those two," Odd asked, nodding towards Mary and William, "are no longer under X.A.N.A.'s control or anything else?"  
"Look. Do we look Xanafied or otherwise confused?" Mary asked, turning her eyes to him.  
"Neither did William look Xanafied back when he supposedly returned on his own after Lyoko's destruction," Odd argued. Mary turned to look at Jeremy.  
"Have you perchance developed something with which we could find out whether someone is Xanafied or not?" she asked the computer genius.  
"Unfortunately no," Jeremy answered, shaking his head. Mary shrugged, frustrated. Nothing would come out of this.  
"We'll figure it out fast if we act normally for a few days. X.A.N.A. most likely strikes in that time frame through them if they're under its possession," Aelita noted.  
"Well, let's agree on that then," Ulrich huffed and went to the elevator ahead of others. It was a sign that the meeting was over.

Mary stepped into the elevator with others, disappointed in the lack of trust. Surreptitiously, William lay his hand on her shoulder and they exchanged a glance. A glance that told that Mary was not alone in this lack of trust.

Mary touched William's hand carefully. They could still stick together when many other Lyoko Warriors were against them just because of their own back luck and X.A.N.A.'s plans.

They still had comrades in these ranks but ever so slightly they started to fear that those comrades would lose their trust and turn against them too.

If that occurred, would happen to them?


End file.
